1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital electronic camera for photographing the image of an object, and more particularly to a digital electronic camera for capturing the image of an object and recording data representative of still and movie images in a single data recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, there are known imaging appliances, such as electronic still cameras capturing objective fields and storing image data representing still images of the fields in an integrated-circuit card memory device, and video camera-tape recorders adapted for capturing movie images of objective fields and recording on a magnetic tape or video tape video signals representing the movie images captured.
The integrated-circuit card memory for use with electronic still cameras has the storage capacity of several megabytes to several-ten megabytes, for example, The limited storage capacity of the card memories forces image data to be compressed by means of still image compression scheme in order-to efficiently utilize the limited storage capacity. In addition, magnetic tapes for use in video movie systems have image signals, representative of movie pictures, recorded in the form of frequency modulated signals. The image data or signals recorded in an image signal storage medium, such as integrated-circuit card memory or magnetic tape, are reproduced by a playback device exclusively adapted for the type of storage medium to be visualized on an image monitor such as a TV monitor device in the form of pictures of the object.
Under those circumstances, there are demands for capturing still and movie images of objects and recording them on a single storage medium. A mere assembling conventional video appliances to attain the capturing and recording of still and movie images in a single storage medium would increase the mass of, and harm the portability and operability of, the resultant assembly, resulting in increase of the cost of the assembly. The recording image data captured in a single storage medium makes it difficult to select a desired image quality suitable for recording both still and movie images of an object.